Introduction:

Transactions can be searched by anyone visiting the website, the only difference being that only logged in Members of CWAAS have access to the most recent 10 years
of Transactions. If you are not a logged in member instead of being able to view the full articles you will only be able to view a brief abstract of the article.

There are three different databases to interrogate and the details of each are given below. There are also different ways of searching and these are described in the section entitled
General Information on Searching below

Important Notes and Technical Issues:

You must be logged in as a member to be able to see and download Transactions that are less than 10 years old. If you are logged in then this will show in the date bar at the top of the page just under the menu buttons :

You will normally remain logged in to the member area until either you log out using the log out button in the main menu bar, or at the end of each membership year. You will have to log in again at the commencement of each membership year in July. Even if you leave the website and close your browser you will normally not have to log in again when you return, unless you have specifically logged out [Some computers may have browsers or other utilities installed that delete the log in cookie when the browser is closed, if this is the case then you will have to log in again each time you visit the site and want to use the transactions on line].

If you are a Member and do not yet have a log in password or you have forgotten it then please following the instructions below.

It has been reported in a very small number of cases that the PDF files will not open or give a corrupted error when trying to directly download them. This is normally caused by
a browser issue where the PDF plug in used by the browser has not updated properly. There are two ways round this issue, the first is to download the PDF to your computer and then open it rather
than trying to directly open it in the browser. The second is to remove Adobe reader and your browser and reinstall them. This issue seems to be more problematic on Apple Mac's and for
those using Firefox or Chrome as a browser, it has not so far been noticed on Internet Explorer.

When you click on a button to open a PDF or extract it is set to open in a new window, depending on your browser and settings this may either open a totally new window
to view the item, or it may open in a new tab in the same browser window. This way you can open more than one document and move between them, closing the tab or window when
you have finished.

General Information on Searching

IMPORTANT NOTE : When using the 'Find articles that contain all words' or 'Find articles containing any of the words' options you must only use plain words, do not rely
on any logical operators as these are just stripped out in this mode. When using 'Use Logical Operators (Google Style, limited see instructions.)' please note that at present
this is limited and you can only use the * + - ~ and <> operators, using brackets () or quotes *quot; will not work because of the way the search is conducted via an abridged index. Using
full articles to search is currently beyond the resource capability of the server. Work is in hand to try and improve this search option.

To save load on the server, the search facility will not search for any word less than 4 characters. Work is in hand to try and improve this.

To prevent hacking all punctuation is stripped out of search terms, hyphens, apostophes, etc. are all removed. Efforts have been made so that hyphenated words, plurals, possessives will be located and
work is continuing on this. It is probably that some terms may not be found, please always try and search with alpha-characters only, and try different combinations.

Whilst there are three different databases that can be searched they can all be accessed from the same search panel on the Transactions page.

The following inputs can be made to make your search :

Find these words : In this box type the words you wish to locate, use only plain words do not use logical operators, case does not matter.
Note that at the moment only an exact search is possible so mis-spelt words will not be found even plurals, so for example a search on Hadrian will not find Hadrian's and a search on
Hadrian's will not find Hadrian, work is in hand to improve on this, but it will be subject to the server being able to handle the additional load presented by more complex searches.

Type of Search: This is the drop down selection available on the same line as the above input, you can choose to find only those articles that have all the words in them,
or the articles that have any of the words in them (this will produce many more results), or chose the free form input using your own logical operators in the same way you
can search on Google though note the restrictions for this. The following operators can be used in 'Google' mode.

+ operator means the word immediately following must be in the article

- operator means the word immediately following must not be in the article

~ operator means the word immediately following is reduced in significance. Useful for moving down the result without eliminating it

< These two operators are used to change a word's contribution to the relevance value that is assigned to a result. The > operator increases the contribution and the
< operator decreases it.

* The asterisk serves as the truncation (or wildcard) operator. Unlike the other operators, it is appended to the word to be affected. Words match if they begin with the
word preceding the * operator. So jane* would match jane and janet, j* would match any word beginning in j.

The double quote ( &quote; &quote;) and parentheses grouping() methods will not work due to the way the database is contructed to minimise use of the server.

Exclude entries with these words : Typing a word in here will exclude any entry that contains that word, even if it contains the wanted words. You can use this to
refine searches that have produced a lot of entries with a topic you are not interested in.

Exclude Member Lists, Indexes and Content List : This box will be ticked by default and prevents the search from looking in files that are purely an index or member list
as this will tend to produce duplicate entries for the same search term. If you wish to also search these documents then just untick this box. This should be used sparingly
due to the additional load it places on the server.

Filter results by year : If you leaved this blank then ALL years will be searched. If you put a year here then the search will be limited to that year only unless
you select a year range from the drop down selection menu to the right of this year entry on the same line. If you enter a year and do not select anything then the exact year only
will be searched. If you for example enter 1967 and select +/- 10 years from the drop down list then you will search everything from 1957 to 1977. You can significantly reduce
the search time and results obtained by entering a year and range.

Chose what to search : From this drop down selection you can chose what you will search and the options are as follows :

Titles and Authors Only : This will search the index that has been extracted from the contents page of each volume.

Old Extracted Indexes : This is the database compiled from various indexes created over the years, some parts are from consolidated indexes and other parts are from
the individual volume indexes. These include the 1981 Index of Old Series Vol I to XVI compiled by Joyce Cherry for the Society, the original index from each volume from
1901 to 1959, the index to The Transactions New Series Volumes LX-LXXXXIX compiled by Joyce and James Cherry, an Electronic Index for 1990-2005 and electronic copies of
the individual volumes from 2006 to 2014 . Links will be provided from the search results to enable you to go to the contents index for that year and thence to the PDF of
the article, or a link to look at the original scanned index used for this collection.

Full document contents : This search will look at the index extracted from the scanned full documents. This index has been created by scanning every article and collecting
an index of how many times each word (excluding common words) appears in that article. This index is then searched and ranked according to how many times the words appear
in the article. This search should therefore find anything that is contained in the articles.

Select the year of Transactions you wish to display below : You can select any year of Transactions from this drop down list and it will take you directly to
a full contents list of the year selected.

Exclude Cross References [Old Index Only] Several indexes in the older volumes contained a cross reference index to help find terms that may have been indexed under
a different name. These will not be included by default as in general they tend to provided a lot of matches that are not very useful to most people. You do however have the
option of including these references in your search by removing the tick from the box. Not this box only has an effect of searches of the Old Extracted Indexes, it has no effect
on the other two types of search.

Important note : All these indexes have been created from scanned copies of the Transactions. There are therefore possible errors due to the scanning and optical character reading
techniques used. Only the Titles and Authors index has been proof read, even then it is still possible there are some errors in it. The other two indexes have not yet been proof read.
It is quite likely the Old Index will no longer be worked on given that the Full Document Index is now available, however there are errors in both of them which only manual proof
reading can correct. It is not known at this time whether this will be carried out or not. Please however use the Correct button by each entry to report any problems you find and
these will be corrected whenever the database is updated. The Old Index will however be left on line as it is felt it provides a useful backup and may contain items the other
indexes do not find.

The score displayed when carrying out a full contents search is based on the number of times the word(s) you are searching for have been found. So for example if you search on the
single word Hadrian and the score is 93 then that means that word was found 93 times in that article. If however you search on Hadrians Wall then if it finds Hadrians 54 times and Wall 37 times
in the same article the score will be 91.

No search will locate words of less than 4 characters, so unfortunately a word such as axe would not be located, though axes would. Work is being carried out to improve this, but it is complex and
will depend on whether current server facilities will handle the load created by more complex searches.

Using the Titles and Authors Index

This index was created from the individual contents pages in the various volumes. There were a few volumes that did not have contents pages and in these cases a contents
page has been created from the articles in that volume.

Both the Authors entries and ther Titles entry will be searched for the terms provided.

Results will be displayed in year order and will be presented in pages of 20 results. You can move between pages using the buttons at the bottom of the results.

The extract shown is simply the first few lines of the article.

There will be a button to the left of the result which will take you to the download link for that article (only the abstract if you are not a logged in member).

To the right of the result there is a 'correct' button, clicking on this will enable you to submit a correction report. The form will already have some details on it, please leave
these details as they are essential to finding the entry, please add as much as you can by way of detail pointing out what correction needs to be made. Corrections may not
be made immediately and may have to wait for the next database update.

Using the Old Extracted Index

This index has been compiled from various indexes created over the years, some parts are from consolidated indexes and other parts are from
the individual volume indexes. These include the 1981 Index of Old Series Vol I to XVI compiled by Joyce Cherry for the Society, the original index from each volume from
1901 to 1959, the index to The Transactions New Series Volumes LX-LXXXXIX compiled by Joyce and James Cherry, an Electronic Index for 1990-2005 and electronic copies of
the individual volumes from 2006 to 2014 .

Results will be displayed in date order and all results found up to a limit of 200 will be displayed. If you get more than 200 results you should refine your results until
you get less than 200. There is no ranking of this search, it simply displays results where the word has been found in the index, which may or may not be relevant to your investigation.

To the right hand side of each result you will get three buttons :

Correct : clicking on this button will allow you to submit a correction report. The form will already have some details on it, please leave
these details as they are essential to finding the entry, please add as much as you can by way of detail pointing out what correction needs to be made. Corrections may not
be made immediately and may have to wait for the next database update.

Index : This will take you to a scanned copy of the index used for creating this database.

Content : This will take you to the contents page for the year this entry is located in. Before clicking make a note of the details particularly the page number. You will
then be able to find the appropriate article in the contents listing and click on the PDF link to download the article [or an abstract for recent volumes
if you are not logged in]. The entry details are carried forward in the heading of the Contents page for your convenience.

Using the Full Document Contents Index.

Each article has been scanned and then optically character read to produce a full text version of the article.

All common words were then removed to reduce the size of these files, for example the, and, or etc.

The remaining words were then indexed, this involved counting the number of times each word appeared in each article (score) and creating a database with this data.

During a search this database is interrogated for the words you have defined and it finds all articles with the words you defined, from the score it then ranks these results
and presents them to you in an order determined by the score with the highest score first. The logic being that the article with the highest score (number of times the term appears)
will be the most relevant, this of course is not always the case.

To prevent overloading the server the search will only present the first 200 results and you should refine your search terms or the years searched in order to reduce this.

To the left of each result will be a PDF button which allows direct download of the article [ an abstract button in the case on non members for more recent volumes ].

To the right of each result will be a 'Correct' button which will allow you to submit a correction to an item. The form will already have some details on it, please leave
these details as they are essential to finding the entry, please add as much as you can by way of detail pointing out what correction needs to be made. Corrections may not
be made immediately and may have to wait for the next database update.

Ensuring you are in our member database :

If you are not yet in our database then you can enter your email in the database by following these instructions.

On the E-Mail list page fill out the JOIN THE E_MAIL LIST form ticking all items you wish to subscribe to (you do not need to tick any items just to be put in the list but we recommend leaving at least leaving the Membership List box checked, this is only used for occasional emails of importance to members.) and click the button at the bottom to submit your request.

It does not matter if you join the database more than once, as any old entry will be discarded when you make a new one.

Almost immediately you will receive an e-mail asking you to verify your request, this is to ensure
only you can make changes and no one else. Complete the verification process as detailed in the e-mail
and you will be added to the list.

At this point your account is enabled but you will still need to get a password before you can access the more recent transactions, see the next section for how to do this.

If you do not wish to go through the on line process then please contact the Membership Secretary via the contacts page and request your name to be added to the e-mail list. You will be sent a confirmation e-mail once you are on the list.

Getting your password.

Once you are on the list you can obtain your password. The process is a few simple steps :

From any page on the website click on the Log In button in the main menu bar towards the top right of the page.

This will present the log in screen, if you do not yet have a password just enter your e-mail address in the User Name field and then click on the 'I agree to the cookie, log me in' button.

You will receive a confirmation page of your submission, you must now wait for a verification e-mail. This is to ensure your e-mail is in our list and that it is you that is using it. Follow the instructions in the e-mail to verify your address and log in. This E-Mail may go into your spam folder, so if you do not get it within a few minutes check your spam folder and if you still have problems contact the webmaster via the general contact page.

This will return you to a page where you must now choose your own password, this can be anything that you wish to use. Completing and submitting this page will take you to a final confirmation page with a link to log in.

Click on the log in link to continue to use the website.

You now have full access to all on line transactions.

Note that if you are not in our database then you will get no email and no error message from the site, this is to prevent hackers from trawling the site to try and locate valid email addresses.

Logging In and Out

Once logged in, the membership system uses a cookie (a small data file verifying that you are a member) that keeps you logged in for the rest of the current membership year until July. If you need to log out e.g. because you are using a public access computer, then click the "log out" button in the main menu bar, remembering that you will then need to log in with your password next time you return.

As the database is reset each year, after membership renewals are due, you will have to log in again the first time you use the facility after the reset. Your log in details will not be changed and you do not have to re-register each year.

Using the Transactions on line

All transactions are now on line, this means that all transactions up to the year prior to the current year are on line, years are added just before the publication of the current year volume, for example 2015 will be added just before the 2016 edition is sent out.

All editions over 10 years old are available in full from the ADS website via links from the indexes on this site, for later editions you can access the full editions if you are a logged in member. If you are not logged in then you will only be able to see extracts of the articles.

If you only see an Abstract button rather than the PDF button for download, or no button at all, then you are not logged in. If you are logged in, then below the menu bar in the same area as the date you will see in bold letters LOGGED IN AS A MEMBER.

When you click on a button to open a PDF or extract it is set to open in a new window, depending on your browser and settings this may either open a totally new window
to view the item, or it may open in a new tab in the same browser window. This way you can open more than one document and move between them, closing the tab or window when
you have finished.

Making corrections to the database

At the right of every displayed entry there is a button labelled 'Correct', if you click on this button it will take you to a contacts form to submit a correction.
The basic information as to the location of the error will already been included in the text message, please add any further details that will enable the correction
to be made. Corrections will be done as soon as possible, but please note that if a correction is required to a PDF document then this will have to be incorporated in
the annual update process with ADS, so it may take some time for corrections to appear. Other simpler corrections to the database will be done as soon as possible and although
we try and advise the reporter when the correction is made, this can not be guaranteed.

If you would like to undertake to proof read and correct any of the PDF documents, then please get in touch with the webmaster.